they're just a bit more than an escape
by blairswaldorfs
Summary: cassie finds her way back to bristol and mini has never really left. cassie x mini. au.


an: because wouldn't they be awesome? although imagine a cassie\effy\mini love triangle.

::

**we meet across a pair of drinks.**

Cassie finds her way back to Bristol (just like they all do - at some point in their lives). Mini has never really left (despite wanting to go everywhere and anywhere when she was younger). They both end up at some bar, on the same night. Cassie drinks like she hasn't since she was eighteen and everything was just _lovely_. It was CassieSidCassieSidCassieSid and it was traveling, and it was sightseeing and it was magical. Until the day it ended. Mini drinks like she hasn't since she was seventeen and Grace was still alive and her Gracie wasn't born yet and everything was fine (and good).

Cassie's fingers trace the glass, eyes in a wide eyed gaze, her lips parted slightly. Entranced by the glass, and the reflection and the bubbles inside of it. Mini laughs, watching Cassie closely as she throws back a shot, tipsier than she's ever remembered being after two drinks.

A band is set up in the corner of the bar, a small group of pathetic musicians doing a cover of one of Mini's favourite songs, she rolls her eyes at the three piece duo whining into the microphone. Cassie tilts her head a little, blonde hair falling all to one side as she watches the girl next to her. There's something interesting about her, something that grabs Cassie's attention.

"Fucking hell," Mini mutters, drowning the rest of her drink. She briefly looks at the time, 11:07. She should get going, she has to be up early for school tomorrow but the bar and the drinks is a lot more enticing than going home to wake up early for another dreadful day of school. Mini twists her lips downwards, pushing her glass away from her and sweeping her bag up into her arm.

"I'm Cassie," The girl next to her introduces herself, eyes curious as she looks up at Mini. Age has matured Mini, but she's dying for just one night of being the Mini she was in high school. The Mini before Grace died, the Mini before Grace was born. _That _Mini, a response from that Mini is on the tip of her tongue. Swirling around, waiting, _begging_, to be used. Instead her eyes grow sad, and her lips turn downwards.

"Mini, and I should be going." She says in a rush, but her feet don't move. She stays seated, chewing on her bottom lip. If only she could stay. The girl, Cassie, makes it easy for her to stay as she pays for her next drink, words of how hard the real world is falling off of her lips. How she needs a break. _If only she knew_, Mini thinks with a graceful smile picking up the drink and sculling it. She wants her head to be fuzzy, until she can barely think. She wants to escape.

She knows what tomorrow is and she wants to avoid it at all costs.

She gets drunk with Cassie, who grew up in Bristol like her. Both went to Roundview, actually. Cassie's older by four years, tales of trouble and mental hospitals and a boy that loved her best friend who was his best friends girlfriend. It makes her laugh, it makes her cry and then she mentions a boy that died and how she was there, and how she ran and never really got to say goodbye. It sobers her up, she knows the feeling of losing a friend. She's lost touch of several people from her youth, so as Cassie, but you run into them from time to time you'll never run into Grace again, or Chris - the boy that died.

They get drunk again and Cassie has a tale of how Duncan danced with her to finish her through an exam. Laughing, Mini manages to tell her that he told her friend Liv about it. _So that's the girl_, Mini thinks memorising her features with her eyes. They're fast friends, and they leave in the early hours of the morning.

Mini doesn't want to go back home, so she goes to Cassie's instead. She looks after her little brother, who's out at a friends. It's Mini that kisses Cassie, it's a little sloppy and it's a little drunk and it's a little bit of an escape. Cassie responds, hands twisted in her hair, lips caressing hers gently.

Stomach is filled with guilt, twisting and turning and making her sick in the morning. Maybe it's a little bit of the vodka and the pounding in her head. There's a ring glistening on her finger, a small diamond. A promise to marry Alo one day. She's not sure if she wants to keep that promise anymore, not sure if she ever wanted to be in it for the long run but there's Grace, and both feel like it's too late to turn back.

::

**we learn to love over a box of chinese food**

Cassie orders Chinese food for the two of them. Mini smiles gratefully, checking her phone to see over twenty missed calls and forty worried texts. All from Alo, isn't she allowed to have a night of fun without Alo worrying about her? She turns her phone off and indulges herself with conversation with the wonderful Cassie who's rather quite beautiful. An engagement ring is carefully slipped off of a finger and into a bag. Where Mini decides it should stay, forever.

"It's your turn," Cassie says in the middle of a beautiful sentence about buses, girls who won't eat and Scotland. Mini looks at her funny, lips in a curvy little line and eyes a little raised. "Tell me about you, tell me a story." Cassie explains further, eagerly ready to listen to the tales that Mini must be hiding up her sleeve, a girl like her has stories. She's a girl like Cassie.

Mini tells her about Grace, the original Grace who was always sweet and always elegant, always refined and always fixed your problems. She told her about how she would always be your friend, it was the most beautiful thing about Grace. She told her about Franky, who came into her world like a force and turned everything upside down. About her small crush on her, and how even now she can feel her lips on hers from the play they were practicing. There's stories about parties, and about her first time with Nick and how awful it was. About Alo and the truth about how teenage pregnancies suck. Little Gracie is mentioned, a warm smile on Mini's face as she talks about her first born and only child.

She opens up about how when she was younger she strived to be the best. To be the skinniest, excessive work outs and watching what she ate. Cassie opens up about her past with eating disorders, how she everybody needed to listen to her once she stopped eating. About the scars she still has, emotional and physical from all the self abuse she inflicted on herself.

They bond over eating disorders as they eat. They bond over deaths of friends. They bond over everything and anything, laughing and crying and sometimes they'll kiss each other.

Cassie falls asleep, hair tied into a loose ponytail and a shirt thrown onto her body. Mini slides off of the couch, and out the door. Back into the real world, back to her life where everything is miserable. She longed to be the old Mini, now she longs to be the Mini that she was with Cassie. A phone number is left scribbled down on a pizza menu in Cassie's kitchen. An M drawn above the numbers, a little love heart next to it.

Cassie smiles sadly as she wakes up, her heart heavy as she surveys the scene. She knew this time would come, she ignores the number but doesn't throw it away. Maybe they can be each others escapes.

::

**we become more than an escape before we break**

Their affair becomes a full fledged _love _affair which it was never meant to be. Alo soon disappears from Mini's mind, she forgets his name as she spends her nights curled up with Cassie under a duvet. Grace becomes second to the girl with blonde hair who shares a similar past to hers. Reuben leaves, going back to live with their dad.

Whispered love confessions across a pillow, hair strewn around the place and clothes dumped on the floor. Everything is pretty there, and everything is perfect in the little bubble they've created.

But everything good must come to an end, and sometimes that good comes to an end by crashing. Cassie ends it one night, Chinese food all around, reminding them of their first kind of date. The day after the night that started everything, and Cassie puts an end to it. Cuts off this relationship teary eyed and in mourning herself.

"I can't do this. I can't watch you fool around with me when you have a family," Mini supposes that there are more words but she doesn't listen. She blocks them out, then she gathers her things in silence as Cassie yells at her to say something, anything before she leaves. She runs home, back into the life she was comfortable in before she met Cassie and she destroyed it all.

Before _they _destroyed everything by being something.

Mini climbs into bed with Alo, and Cassie climbs into bed with herself.

They lose contact and once that was something becomes a nothing.

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an: wtf that turned out weird. and this is my first time writing for skins ugh it turned out different to what i wanted sobs.


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